


The Time and Space Between Us

by webgeekist



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/F, Korrasami Week 2020, SPACE GIRLFRIENDS, Space AU, and is kind of in a similar context, cw: suicidal ideation, it lasts about as long as the moment in season 1 where she stands on the ledge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26491678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webgeekist/pseuds/webgeekist
Summary: Korra can count the days, hours, minutes, and seconds since her crew was forced to abandon their expedition on Mars and return home.She counts them not as a failure, but as a distance between herself and every other human in existence.
Relationships: Korra/Asami Sato
Comments: 6
Kudos: 61





	The Time and Space Between Us

Five hundred twenty one days, sixteen hours, thirty-seven minutes.

The valley around her meager home was wide, dusty, and barren. What little weather there tended to kick up the dirt and let it ride in the air for days at a time. It hadn’t been an anticipated weather occurrence, and she wasn’t sure how they had missed it for all the careful planning that went into building the homestead. The red dust never totally blocked out the sun — a blessing for her crops and for her thirsty solar power cells that kept her warm and alive — but the stars were a different story. At night, the plain was cast in endless darkness, not a feature to be found.

She would leave the haze once a month. She’d store up what reserves she could and make the journey to the hills, just a few miles away, and pick out the safe driving path to the top. It was just a few hundred feet, but it was enough to clear the fine grime and rise above the dust bowl below. There, she’d park, disembark, and stare at the stars for as long as she could, picking out the brightest one early and watching it as it traveled across the sky.

Korra had done this as many times as she could over the five hundred twenty one days, sixteen hours and thirty eight minutes since she’d been left alone by her crew’s impromptu escape from the valley. Mars, it turned out, was a fickle place to settle, and just a year into their two year expedition they’d been forced to abandon the planet.

She closed her eyes against the memory of that night, of the panic settling in as the friction of the dust storm turned the atmosphere dangerous. With a delayed message from Mission Control screeching in her ears about the rising danger, she gathered her crew together in the hydroponics pod.

Her crew — Mako, Bolin, Jinora — but not Asami. Their engineer was outside making repairs to the large rover, ensuring that they could escape at all.

Each of the others had gathered small bags, the fewest of the few belongings they had brought that they couldn’t bear to leave behind. The weight amounted to almost nothing, but they couldn’t stay any longer. One by one they made a break for the rover, seeking shelter in its storm-grade interior, until only Korra was left behind in the homestead. She powered it down, sealed it up, and ran.

She left too late.

Static lightning began to strike near the power hut, and she could see it coming as it rolled across the plain. Ever the athlete, she could rely on her speed to get her away from danger before. In the lower gravity, she broke into an awkward, bouncing run, and it was obvious soon enough that the storm would beat her.

So she yelled into her headset at her second in command, issuing one final order. Mako paused for a long moment before confirming it, and as the electrical storm washed over her, striking her suit and shorting everything out, she could hear Asami’s heated protest turn to screams.

Korra woke some undetermined time later to the shrill klaxon of her oxygen meter warning her of a critically low volume. Slowly, she rolled over, pain lancing through her right leg as it moved in a direction it did not want to. The entrance of the homestead was just a few feet away, meaning she had been thrown at least a hundred backward. Korra crawled to the pod, hauled herself into the airlock, and replaced the oxygen canister with great effort, every muscle in her body aching from impact and shock. As sense came back to her, she remembered the circumstance she was in, and just as the reality of her command to Mako struck her full force, the shimmering light of a rocket burn pierced the dusty sky.

She was alone. On  _ Mars _ .

In the days that followed, she wrapped her broken leg up as best she could and slowly took stock of what she had left. Hydroponics had been spared, granting her enough food and a way to keep growing it, but communications had not. It took a long week of hobbling and gritting her teeth through pain to diagnose the issue, another week of agony to cobble together the parts, and a week more of feverish frustration while on antibiotics to realize she was still missing something crucial. Frustrated, tired, and losing faith in her ability to fix an engineering problem alone, she found herself in Asami’s sleep bay, hoping beyond hope that she’d left some engineering notes behind.

Stepping into the bay was like walking into an emotional buzz saw. Korra had never entered her crew’s bunks, knowing that this last stronghold of privacy was an important barrier for their mental well-being, but the moment she set foot in there she was made painfully aware of how alone she was. Asami had brought printed pictures of all of them — during candidate school, during training, at their selection conference — but the ones she’d kept nearest the head of her bed had just two subjects.

Korra sat on the edge of the bed and stared at one in particular, just the two of them, just after Korra had been named mission commander. They had gone out that night, dressed to the nines for the fanciest dinner Korra ever had in her life. Asami must have pulled every string she could to get them in that night, and they had an amazing time.

Asami had been the photographer, the selfie taken by her Satophone, her face turned into Korra’s as she planted a kiss on the side of her head, and Korra’s smile was so wide and bright she might have rivaled the sun.

That was the first of many nights she spent in Asami’s bed, crying until exhaustion forced her into sleep.

There were no easy answers in Asami’s cabin, only hard realities that she hadn’t allowed herself to deal with. Night after night she found herself in that doorway, living in the litter of the life shared with her best friend, and slowly she began to realize that Asami had never truly been merely a friend. They had both been too driven by the mission to indulge in romantic attachments, instead focusing on the goal ahead of them. In their crew, they found a small family, with only one of them married to a flight controller, and the other dating another astronaut candidate.

Asami, Korra knew, had nothing and no one else. Her mother was gone, her father had sent her away to boarding school for most of her childhood, and when she came back home he was distant and work-oriented. They bonded over engineering, she had said — innovating, fixing problems, releasing solutions. And she was brilliant at it. If her father hadn’t left her the company that built their rocket ships when he died, she still would have been the best equipped, most qualified engineer for their crew. Korra had always been drawn to her confidence, her grace, her intelligence, and her warmth, but when she realized how tragic her upbringing had been, she began to marvel at how this wonderful creature could be so kind and generous when all the world seemed to do was steal away the things she loved most.

Somewhere around the launch, or maybe just after it, their friendship started to expand like the space before them, even though there was no time to explore it. It was enough that they were together on the adventure, guaranteed to see one another every day for three years. They could deal with their feelings later.

Later ticked down to never, their chance left for dead in an emergency launch.

One week later she found herself on the ledge, in the rover, above the dust storm that had doomed her. It had been a month since the launch, a week since she’d taken to sleeping in Asami’s bed, wrapped in the comfort and agony of whatever lingered of her delicate scent. That night was as clear a night as she’d ever experienced on either planet. She found the brightest star in the sky — her distant planet, a home she’d never see again, and imagined the small dot of the large rocket hurtling through space, taking her crew to safety. Taking Asami further and further away.

Tears broke through again, along with rage, and her fisted hands slammed once, twice, and again into the useless comm panel on the rover’s dash. After a moment, the rage passed, her breathing calmed, and she was left bereft of any feeling but a longing to end the pain.

As she thought about how easy it would be to slide the rover into gear and let it fall down the cliffside, the hiss of the radio indicated the catch of a signal. Curiosity and duty drilled into her through years of training got the better of her depression, and she dialed the signal in until she could pick up on whatever was being sent.  _ It’s probably the static of an automatic system update broadcast _ , she thought, but that precious spark of hope flickered as the sound of a voice began to coalesce in the noise.

“...trying….Mars Base….you can…”

The flickering flame roared to a bonfire. Korra would recognize that voice anywhere. Moments later, she had the frequency matched.

“...Mars Base, do you read? This is Explorer One. Please come in.”

She sat there and listened for several refrains, her heart overjoyed to simply hear the sound of Asami’s voice after so long. She sounded tired, as if she’d been talking for days. Maybe she had. It had been an entire month, after all. Who in their right mind would have kept trying to reach her after so long?

Korra started inspecting the controls of the rover, wondering if she just sent a broadcast out if it would ever reach her, or if she could configure the equipment to connect to a satellite and send a repeating message.

“...Korra. Please…please respond. Please talk to me.”

She paused in her work, spurred to stillness by how the tone broke halfway through, and Korra’s heart shattered into a million pieces as she realized without doubt that she wasn’t the only one suffering. She wasn’t the only one whose heart had been crushed. For a moment, she imagined what it would have been like if the roles had been reversed, if they had been forced to leave Asami behind against her own protests.

She would have put herself in front of the radio every possible waking hour of every lonely day and broadcast back to the homestead until the signal loss was complete, exactly thirty-eight days, seven hours, and fifteen minutes into the trip home. Today by the best of her estimation was day thirty.

So she sent up a signal, and hoped it would get there. Round-trip at that distance, it would take almost forty minutes.

“Explorer One, this is Mars Base. I don’t know if you’ll get this...I’m sending this up on the only working communication equipmentI have, and it’s going up blind. I’m alive. Asami….I’m alive.”

She gave a brief status report, then ended the send, then waited and watched that star she’d picked out as if willing the signal out would make it detectable. As if, through time and space, she could compel Asami to listen.

Thirty seven minutes and fifteen seconds later, she received her answer.

Signal loss was complete within two weeks, but Asami had worked out a backup plan and walked Korra through how to rig the rover to do it — one of the older orbital satellites, the one responsible for rover system updates, could act as a message inbox. It would be text-only, and she could only receive messages once a month as the satellite passed directly overhead, but she could send messages to and from mission control with Explorer One as a relay, and get help.

At the end of the first month, she went up to the top of the bluff and waited. Soon enough, the satellite passed, a streaking star in a crowded sky. The little rover had its clearest shot of downloading the data, and when it did, she had days of messages to read through. Mission Control had probably nearly filled whatever memory was available sending her every drop of information they could, combined with one or two ideas sent by Asami to improve systems they hadn’t thought of.

It was late in the evening when she came across a small file, the smallest file she’d downloaded, names  _ for-k.txt _ . She opened it, curious what would have been worth sending that was so short.

_ Dear Korra, _

_ I still can’t believe it! I’m so happy you’re alive! The month where we thought you were dead was the worst month of my life, but I have to admit that knowing you’re alive and that we left you is harder. I’m so, so sorry. I know you gave Mako an order, and I know he followed his training. I don’t blame him, and I don’t blame you. But now we’re so far away that our only chance of saving you is over a year from now and I...I just want to keep you alive until then. I won’t stop working until you’re back with us. _

_ But in the meantime, please write. To all of us, or even just one of us. Let’s keep the loop going as much as we can until we see each other face to face again. _

_ I want you to know something, though: I miss you. I miss your company and your friendship. I miss your infectious laughter and the way you’d slurp mashed potatoes, which I’m pretty sure shouldn’t be possible according to the laws of physics. I just miss you. _

_ Take care of yourself down there. _

_ Asami _

  
  


She hadn’t expected the note, but she re-read it every night for weeks.

  
  


_ Dear Asami, _

_ I’m so, so glad you left this note! I needed something personal after all the techno-jargon Mission Control dumped on me. And if I’m honest, I needed to hear from you. I miss you, too, and I wish...please don’t take this the wrong way, but I wish you were here. I wouldn’t want you stuck here, of course. It would just be nice to have the company most days. _

_ I wouldn’t want to be in Mako’s shoes, having followed my order. He did the right thing, and I don’t blame him at all, but I keep thinking he must feel so guilty. Please watch out for him, and if you can subtly hint that I would never be mad at him for following my orders, maybe that’ll help. _

_ Please don’t tell the others, but I don’t know if I can write to them. I feel like you’re the only one that might understand this stuff. _

_ Oh, and don’t let Bolin wreck my ship. _

_ Korra _

  
  


After the first few cycles, they got things coordinated such that Korra didn’t wait to send some kind of message back to Asami. Korra took to saving the letters for the evening, so she could sneak into her sleep cabin and read the letter in the place she felt nearest to Asami. The plans from Mission Control also kept rolling in, keeping her plenty busy in between broadcasts. Ten months later, Explorer One was due to dock with one of the spare fuel boosters parked between home and Mars, a backup plan in case the first, second, or third one was destroyed by space debris before they got to them, left there by Asami because she planned for every case. The problem would be the time it took to get back to Mars, and the lack of lander fuel once they arrived.

It was a problem, but it was a problem for ten months later. They had a little time to find a fix for it.

Asami sent her solutions in the form of tech manuals, tests, and locations. The tentative plan was to set out for the lander of one of the earlier expeditions and use it as an escape vehicle. The difficulty would be prepping the lander for launch with meager materials, and her leg was still so busted she walked with a cane everywhere. It would not be easy at all, and it would take several multi-day trips to accomplish it.

With five months left, she left her homestead in good standing, and returned four days later to the same level of decimation she’d found when the abandon order had been issued. The power supply was shot, again, but the worst of the damage had been on the hydroponics pod. Her entire crop was gone, and she only had enough food left for two months.

Two. Not five. She would starve well before help arrived.

Four hundred ninety one days, sixteen hours, and fifty minutes after she had been left behind, she was parked in the rover overlooking her ruined camp, waiting for the satellite to come back in range. She would tell Asami in this letter. She would tell her everything.

And maybe, in a month, she might be granted one last grace before she died.

The letter she got from Asami that month was reminiscent of the time they’d spent together on vacation. They’d all opted for some downtime on Ember Island, a few months before launch. The weather had been pleasant, and the beaches were mercifully empty. It was just the crew and their significant others.

It left the two of them together most of the trip, Mako spending most of his time with Bolin and Opal when they weren’t all together, and they made the most of that time being as ridiculous as they could, as if they were teenagers on a holiday rather than professionals gearing up for the most important mission of their lives. They were shoving water at one another, standing in the shallow surf one evening when Asami shoved Korra down, dunking her into the water. She wasn’t upset — she emerged from the water laughing and smiling, but stopped when she saw the light of the sunset reflected in Asami’s bright green eyes.

They stood there for a moment, Korra’s hand in Asami’s, and in hindsight Korra thought maybe that was really the moment when her feelings turned. They were standing so close, and her hand was so warm, and if she’d just moved an inch closer their lips would have pressed together in a kiss.

Korra remembered that vacation vividly, but it didn’t matter now. All that mattered was Asami’s answer.

Five hundred twenty one days, sixteen hours, fifty three minutes. That’s how long she’d been on this planet, alone. And now, she had about twelve desperately rationed days of food left before inevitable starvation began. Whatever Mission Control or her crew had to say with the data dump that had just completed would be the last things they had to say at all.

There was one last letter to Asami. Korra asked her to take care of her dog when she got back home.

The drive back down to the homestead was the longest of all the drives she’d made. She realized there was a possibility that Asami didn’t feel the same way about her, and that she would spend her final days heartbroken. She was prepared for that possibility, but it wasn’t worth leaving things unsaid between them either way. Asami deserved the truth, and whichever way it fell, so did she.

She left the technical dumps for later, and went straight for Asami’s cabin. She sat on the bed and activated her infopad, scrolling through the larger files for the smallest one. Her heart sank when she realized it was the smallest of any letter Asami had ever written — only 360 bytes.

This would be a quick letdown. She tapped the file, and sighed.

  
  


_ Korra — we’re coming to get you. We’ll be there in thirteen days. Don’t die on me. _

_ I left my journal in my cabin. There’s a letter for you at the back of it. _

_ See you soon. _

_ Asami _

  
  


She blinked a few times, and reread the note a few times more. Thirteen days? And...a journal? Dazed, she looked around the cabin and found a small notebook on the corner of her desk, ignored for as long as it has been because reading it or touching it or doing anything beyond invasion of privacy above and beyond what she’d already committed by simply being in there was horrifying.

With permission, she acknowledged the small leather bound journal, ran her hands across the front of it reverently, and leafed through from the back until she found words.

_ Dearest Korra, _

_ One day, I hope to be able to tell you this in person, but for now my journal will have to do. Maybe I can practice how I say this here, so that one day, when we’re home or at least safely on our way, I can tell you these things in a way that doesn’t make you run away. _

_ The truth is I’ve been in love with you for years, but I’ve kept it to myself. You’ve worked so hard for this mission, dedicated yourself to an expedition that means more than any one of us, and I cannot ruin that. I knew I could continue to work with you, content to be near you, until these things could be safely said. Until we could potentially be together and involved and not have it interfere with the mission. _

_ This all sounds so cold, though. As if you are less important to me than the mission. You’re not. Spirits, Korra, if you had asked me to leave the expedition team the night before we launched and run away with you, I would have. You’re the only person on this planet who understands me completely, and I am happiest when I’m with you. I would give or do anything for you, and I tell myself this is why I stay silent. This is why we — us— had to wait. _

_ I think I tell myself that, in part, as comfort to a coward. I’m also afraid of losing you. If you don’t return my feelings — or worse, if something happened to you — I would never recover. I have never cared for anyone as deeply as I care for you, and all the pain I have ever felt would pale like the moon in eclipse if I ever lost you. I know it would break me, even now, and maybe I’m afraid it would hurt more if I admitted my feelings for you. Maybe it would hurt more to keep this from you, and know we could have had something even more special and precious if I had just been brave. _

_ I don’t know. And I hope to never know that. I hope we can continue through this mission, return home, and be together in whatever form you wish that to be. I only know how I feel, and that this feeling is forever. _

_ Maybe one day you’ll read this, and by then, I hope you’ll already know. _

_ With all my love, _

_ Asami _

Korra read the letter over and over again, and this time when she fell asleep in Asami’s bed, the tears she had been crying were of joy, and not sorrow.

The next morning she rifled through the technical procedures sent over to her to get her off the ground. Explorer One would burn harder to get her there, and to save fuel for the trip back to the nearest spare rocket module, would have to meet her higher in orbit. It meant stripping the lander of every last ounce of weight she could, as fast as she could.

The rover was packed full of whatever random batteries she could spare, a portable solar charger, and all of her food and water. She left all her belongings behind in the shuttered homestead, except for two things — the first was the letter, torn free of Asami’s journal. The second was a small, smooth, black rock from the top of the bluff.

She worked through the remaining days, stopping only to eat meager meals, drink small amounts of water, relieve herself, and sleep. The titanium nose of the lander came off along with every ceramic heat shield on the vehicle. Next went most of the redundant telemetry computers, leaving only one backup, and every single instrument she didn’t need for liftoff alone. Finally, the entire interior was stripped down, leaving her with a single baremetal seat in the center of an empty cockpit, open windows to the atmosphere, and a tarp over the top of the whole contraption, strapped down as tight as possible to avoid taking on dust particles as weight on liftoff. She would stay in her suit, on her own air supply. She didn’t need windows.

It looked like a ridiculous death trap conceived of by a fourth grader and built in someone’s backyard, but the science was sound. Asami had blessed every instruction herself.

And then, it was time.

The comms in the lander were meager, and old, but when the static cleared and she heard a human voice for the first time in over a year, she nearly sobbed in relief.

“Lander Three, this is Explorer One, do you read?”

“Explorer One, this is Lander Three. It’s so fucking good to hear your voice, Jinora.”

The excitement in the younger woman’s voice was obvious. “Same here, Boss. Now let’s get you off that rock.”

Takeoff was rough. For her years of training and simulations, for all her test flights and high speed runs and adrenaline-fueled stunts, the unexpected ways the rocket moved when weight and aerodynamics were so significantly changed nearly made her puke in her suit. Mars pulled at the rocket, reluctant to let its sole inhabitant leave, and Korra closed her eyes and grit her teeth and held on tight. Soon enough, the noise faded and the ride smoothed out, and she opened her eyes in time to see the red planet below her as she broke through the upper atmosphere, getting further and further away.

“Lander Three, do you copy?”

It was Asami’s voice. Asami. So close.

“Yeah, I’m here. I’m still here.”

She paused a little too long. This wasn’t a welfare check. Something was wrong.

“Korra...you’re off-course by a couple meters. We’re trying to course-correct with maneuvering thrusters but we can’t burn any more fuel.”

She unbuckled herself and pushed to the walls, peering out into the darkness for sign of the ship. And she found it, and followed it, the sight welcome and beautiful and…really, really,  _ really _ far away.

“Asami…this is a lot of meters.”

“I’m on a tether, Korra. I’m going to come get you.”

“There’s no way it’ll be enough.”

“Korra,  _ do not give up on me. _ ”

She watched as a small white speck left the airlock, and as it neared, she hoped. Maybe it would be close enough. Maybe it would work. But soon enough, she was fully extended, and Korra could tell Asami would miss the lander. It was nowhere near enough.

“You’re at least forty meters short.”

“No.”

“I’m going to meet you out there.”

“Korra—“

“Catch me, Asami.”

The only propulsion she had left was the air in her suit, and it would have to do. If she ran out of it, at least she he’ll have died trying. Korra reached back to the air tube and unlatched it.

The speed with which she shot away from the lander was unexpected.

“Korra!”

Space tumbled around her as she careened in a direction she could not control, and she could only pray it was the right one, At length, the lack of oxygen started to cloud her vision, and the edges began to blacken. She had no idea if she’d made it, no idea if she’d missed, and increasingly, no idea what the voices screaming into her crackling comms unit were saying.

Then, just as the edges of her vision closed completely, she caught a glimpse of brilliant green, the flash of a pale face framed against black hair, red lips drawn into a worried frown.

And then, air. Blessed air.

The world faded back in, and she recognized where she was — on Explorer One, in the airlock, with Bolin standing in his suit operating the lede winch and Asami smiling at her, helmet off, hair curtained around Korra’s own face.

“I told you not to not to die on me.”

Weakly, Korra brought her gloved hand to Asami’s face, and smiled.

“I got your letter.”

—-

The sun sat low on the horizon, freshly dipped into the sea, lighting the sky with the bold colors of an ending day. Korra sat quietly on a beachside lanai, enjoying the sight, able with time and distance to appreciate it for its eerie familiarity.

There were no oceans on Mars, no water whatsoever to reflect light across, though perhaps one day humans would create some. Even so, the colors of the sunset seemed the same on Ember Island as they sometimes did on the best of days on that distant red planet.

She was one of a handful of people qualified to make that aesthetic judgment, but of all of them, the best equipped to remember it.

A gentle hand lowered onto her shoulder and pulled her away from the sight and the memories, pulling her into bright green eyes and a warm smile; the woman she loved was seated beside her, facing the waves.

“It’s a beautiful sunset,” Asami remarked, her hand falling into place within Korra’s. “What were you thinking about while you were watching it?”

Korra’s gaze reluctantly dropped, just for a moment, to the dark polished rocked at Asami’s neck, then traveled back up the silver chain she’d had affixed to it to meet her eyes once more. Her thumb brushed against the ring on Asami’s hand, still new and unfamiliar, but every bit as meaningful and important as the rock around her neck.

“Do you know how long we were apart?” She asked, not at all surprised when Asami didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Five hundred thirty four days, five hours, and ten minutes.”

Korra leaned forward and closed her eyes, gently pressing a tender kiss against her wife’s lips, before backing away to reply. 

“I was thinking about how much I missed the color green.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty heavily based on The Martian, if it wasn’t obvious, but with the focus more on Korra’s developing feelings and less on the science and a single person being alone, I’m leaving that acknowledgement here instead of promoting it. The circumstances are similar. The content really isn’t.
> 
> (Updated 9/18 for some minor editing mistakes)


End file.
